The Move To New York
In 1680 the estate at Eggarton was sold.51
Scull appears to infer that the sale would have supplied Dorothy with sufficient funds to emigrate.
It appears that Dorothy had already sent her surviving children to America for her daughter is said to have married in August of that year.
On February 8, 1680/1 she arrived at Oyster Bay, Long Island.52
Scull thought that the land they had gotten from John Richbell in 1663 would have been available to them and
indeed it seems possible that Matthew Prior, their former employee also being a Quaker, might well have allowed them to settle there.
Singing Quakers.
Already on August 5, 1680, one of Dorothy’s daughters, also named Dorothy, who was born in 1661, married John Davis, who seems to have arrived about the same time from Wales.53
He appears to have been one of the sect called “singing Quakers,” but it is not clear which group of immigrants he arrived with.
It is quite possible that he married Dorothy’s daughter in England and traveled with them.
At one time I thought he might be one of a number of “sweet singers” whom the Duke of York in 1681 had banished to his colony.54
Their religion was characterized by their “renouncing the use of arms,” and being “for burning every book except the bible.”
They were “taken prisoner by a party of the kings forces while they were a worshiping after their own manner,” brought to Edinburgh and then put into Bridewell in London.
When they were examined by the Duke before the privy council, they utterly renounced the use of arms or any weapon other than prayer.
Not being condemned they dispensed with a trial.
However, since a certain Capt. Lockhart had a ship bound for America, the government ordered him to go to the house where the people were being kept, and find out whether they would board voluntarily.
Most of them agreed to it, but any that didn’t were put on board anyway.
Marriage out of unity.
The marriage of John Davis to Dorothy Gotherson in 1680 seems to have been performed presumably by an ordained minister, a Rev. Nicholson.
Their association with Quakers suggests, however, that this man could possibly have been Joseph Nicholson, who was a Quaker activist and non-conformist,
who had been on Long Island in 1676 afterwards settling on Rhode Island.
The singing Quakers on Long Island, sometimes referred to as “Case’s crew,” were considered trouble makers and did not abide the set form of the Friends.55
There are some near contemporary accounts that support this.
Preparative meetings were often held at John Feke’s house at Matinicock.56
Writing of the marriage of John’s daughter there in 1698, a noted minister present recalled,
“I met with some of the people called ‘Ranters,’ who disturbed our meeting.”
Again in 1699 at the same place, another visitor present said “the ‘ranters’ kept pretty still most of the time,
save one old man who hooted like an owl making a ridiculous noise as their manner is and stood up and bore testimony against Friend’s set forms of marriage.”57
We are tempted to conjecture that John Davis and the sweet singers were still singing, and speculate that this may have been him justifying his marriage.
Case’s crew died down about 1700 and some time around 1705 John and Dorothy (Gotherson) Davis moved to Pilesgrove, Salem County, New Jersey.
He died there in 1708 and she in 1709.
There is indirect evidence that another daughter of Dorothy’s may have married a man with the Kentish surname of Cousins (or Cozzins).58
Perhaps this family had accompanied Dorothy to Long Island.
They seem to have moved to Rhode Island.59
Dorothy’s death.
Preparative meetings of the Friends were often held at Matthew Priar’s house.60
We suspect that Dorothy met there, but this again is pure speculation.
We might take her absence from the records and her general outspoken nature to imply her complicity with or joining in with the Ranters.
In any case it appears that she died at Oyster Bay on April 10, 1688.61
